Fernando Gregório
with Lua Girino, Chaski No, Sol Cabrini, Viola Leqi He and Wei Kang
2021 Graduate Research Fund Awardee
ITP Class of 2021
Fernando Gregório is a Brazilian mixed media artist working on the intersection of visual and performing arts and new digital technology. He showed his work at "The IV Wrong Biennial" of digital art in 2020 and is currently part of the SloMoCo residency focused on movement and computing.
PROJECT
The Firebird
The world is on fire. The Firebird carries a secret technology inside of their belly: a magic seed that germinates every time that they are sleeping and dreaming, and turns into a virtual tree, which works as an invisible machine with the power to balance the temperature of their surroundings. To ensure that the dream tree doesn't become extinct, the Firebird needs help to find a protected area in the city to allow them to sleep and dream for long enough for the invisible seed to germinate.
The Firebird is a choreographic intervention for public spaces performed by four artists coming from ITP and the Performance Studies department. The performers move and dance together with relational physical sculptures containing two digital layers: the first is sound-reactive and the second is composed of augmented reality animations.
The sculptures work as big toys which engage the whole body while interacting with a cellphone through sonic stimulation. They also have Image Targets to be tracked by an augmented reality application allowing the audience to watch the performance with a virtual layer composed of 3D motion-driven graphics. The project is an investigation of collective and performative augmented reality experiences for alternative spaces.
What is the body made of? The animations generate hybrid organisms as a way of imagining all the different coordinations that are necessary for the Firebird to be alive and investigate symbiotic relationships between humans, machines, and myths in the context of more-than-human migration during environmental emergencies.
Conception, direction and technology: Fernando Gregório
Interpreter-creators: Lua Girino, Viola Leqi He, Chaski No, and Sol Cabrini
Wearable design: Wei Kang
